12.06.2016
For decades, the carefully scripted Anglo-Saxon world has been gloating at the sight of lesser polities’ perpetual political turmoil: whether it be European — France’s successive ‘Republics’ – currently the Fifth — or the escapades of Italy’s media tycoon turned politician – or Latin America’s succession of what Fidel Castro called ‘politicheros’ – or Africa’s long-term dictators – the US has always been above such confusion, our two parties participating in regularly-scheduled two and four-year election cycles.
Hence surprise and incomprehension among both actors and commentators, as the Republican Party finds itself saddled with a candidate chosen by a rambunctious people rather than party hacks … while the Democrats are stuck with Hillary, a bonafide NeoCon, in concert with Bush/Cheney/Wolfowitz politics: Democratic youth may be discovering socialism, and are unlikely to vote for Hillary because she has not.
2016 will will probably down in history as the year the US strayed beyond the boundaries of the Democrat/Republican duopoly, the elephant and the donkey, the blue and the red, into a free-for-all in which the media no longer has to soup up ‘stories’ (which have replaced rational analysis) to increase listener ratings. Few Americans have considered those stories are made to appear more meaningful in terms of policy than they are.
But never have we seen such grasping at straws! While third-party candidates have always been tagged as “spoilers” (like Ralph Nader who may have cost Al Gore the fateful 2000 presidency…) in this extraordinary situation, the Republicans are frantically seeking anyone who will run against their presumptive nominee. And Democratic voters are trying to convince Bernie Sanders to ditch the party and run as an independent. News shows reveal major Republican movers and shakers desperately try to pull out of a hat someone who has not already been defeated by Donald Trump in the primaries, and who would be willing to take on ‘the Donald’ as he is referred to, as a third party candidate whom they would back. Such disarray has probably never been seen in Washington, and it signals that there is a real right and a real left in this country, which have left the two so-called ‘ruling’ parties behind.
And yet, in foreign affairs, progressives are faced with a Cornelian dilemma, (one in which a person is obliged to choose between two courses of action either of which will have a detrimental effect on him or herself, or a loved one). Donald Trump has been the only presidential candidate to affirm that the US should not be the world’s policeman and that he could get along with the Russian President, while Hillary Clinton would continue President Obama’s anti-Russian policies.
As NATO tanks roll across Germany toward the Baltic frontiers with Russia, European leaders fear the upcoming European soccer tournament in France could be threatened by terrorism. French workers have already paralyzed the country, threatening to walk off their jobs at the country’s 58 nuclear power plants, to protest the global financial mafia’s demand for a more ‘flexible’ labor market.
Seen in the context of America’s machinations abroad, it’s no surprise that major TV outlets obligingly announced that Hillary had already clinched the nomination before California voters went to the polls, causing many Democrats to stay at home, depriving Bernie of that crucial state’s delegates. But as with the nursery rhyme ‘Humpty-Dumpty’, not all the Party’s men can put the Democrats back together again: the Bernie-or-bust movement could split the Democratic vote and put the newly minted Republican in the White House. The only thing standing in the way are Trump’s ‘racist’ attacks on a federal judge, which are forcing his new colleagues to seriously consider depriving him of the formal nomination, even though this would lead to a revolt of his gun-toting supporters.
As fear rises like fumes from a swamp, in a country in which feminism has become more important than fascism or the threat of World War III, the City Upon a Hill has descended into the real world alongside the rest of humanity, and it is totally at a loss.
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